The Forever Beating Heart

            In Edgar Allen Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart," the point of the story is that doing an evil act will always come back to haunt a person. In this story, Poe is obsessed with an old man's eye. It drives him mad, and he no longer wants to see this man and his "Evil Eye" (227). The old man is watched every night carefully for eight days until Poe makes the move in killing him. He is beaten and then suffocated by the bedding the old man was sleeping in that night. Poe is very satisfied with himself, as he thinks he came up with the perfect plan to dispose of the body and never get caught for the act he committed. He is pleased with what he has done and thinks he will never have to see the old man and his eye ever again.
          Poe is a very dark person. With his rough background and history, he "had great insight to the neurotic mind" (226). The fact that he writes about beating an old man because of his eye shows that Poe is very dark and twisted, and looks at the world with a different perspective. When the police come to his house because they got a complaint that a shriek was heard with suspicious behavior, Poe did not seem frightened at all. "I smiled-for what had I to fear" (229)? He knew the police were looking for the old man and the reasoning behind the loud scream. Poe was very much satisfied with what he had done and how he had gotten rid of the body. As the police were having conversation with him, Poe heard a ringing noise that he could not figure out where it was coming from. The noise got louder and louder as the night went on and with the police still at his house. finally, it hit Poe what the ringing noise was. He knew it was the beating heart of the man he just murdered. "'Villains!' I shrieked, 'dissemble no more! I admit the deed!-tear up the planks!-here, here!-it is the beating of his hideous heart" (229)!
          Even though Poe thought his plan was perfectly drawn out to where he would be able to get away with what he did, 'karma' came back to bite. Evil doings have no justifications. There is never a good reason for why something evil needs to be done. One will never get away with it forever. The truth is always revealed sooner than later. Poe did not think he actions would back to haunt him later on. He could not live with the knowing of what he did to the innocent man. It is not worth living with the guilt of knowing a person committed a terrible act. Poe will never forget the old man he murdered and the beating heart that kept the image of the "pale blue eye" (226) forever in his memory.